Bob Dylan’s” The Bootleg Series Volume 9 – The Witmark Demos will arrive on Tuesday, October 19. Dylan will also re-release his first eight LPs in mono in a box set titled Bob Dylan – The Original Mono Recordings.

The Witmark Demos feature 47 early Dylan songs. The Bard plays only acoustic guitar, harmonica and occasionally piano on the recordings. The tracks were originally recorded for his first music publisher, Leeds Music, in January 1962, and for his second publisher, M. Witmark & Sons, between 1962 and 1964. The Witmark Demos also include 15 Dylan songs that were recorded by the artist only for these sessions and which have never been officially released to the public until now. These include the plaintive “Ballad For A Friend,” the civil rights era-inspired “Long Ago, Far Away” and “The Death Of Emmett Till” and the poignant “Guess I’m Doing Fine.”

According to Dylan’s camp, “While many of these early songs on The Witmark Demos found their way onto Bob Dylan’s own albums, much of the world’s first exposure to them was through their recordings by others, including Peter, Paul and Mary and Stevie Wonder (“Blowin’ In The Wind”), Judy Collins (“Tomorrow Is A Long Time”) and The Byrds (“Mr Tambourine Man”).”

The Bootleg Series Volume 9

Disc 1:

1. Man On The Street (Fragment)
2. Hard Times In New York Town
3. Poor Boy Blues
4. Ballad For A Friend
5. Rambling, Gambling Willie
6. Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues
7. Standing On The Highway
8. Man On The Street
9. Blowin’ In The Wind
10. Long Ago, Far Away
11. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
12. Tomorrow Is A Long Time
13. The Death of Emmett Till
14. Let Me Die In My Footsteps
15. Ballad Of Hollis Brown
16. Quit Your Low Down Ways
17. Baby, I’m In The Mood For You
18. Bound To Lose, Bound To Win
19. All Over You
20. I’d Hate To Be You On That Dreadful Day
21. Long Time Gone
22. Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues
23. Masters Of War
24. Oxford Town
25. Farewell

Disc 2

1. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
2. Walkin’ Down The Line
3. I Shall Be Free
4. Bob Dylan’s Blues
5. Bob Dylan’s Dream
6. Boots Of Spanish Leather
7. Walls of Red Wing
8. Girl From The North Country
9. Seven Curses
10. Hero Blues
11. Whatcha Gonna Do?
12. Gypsy Lou
13. Ain’t Gonna Grieve
14. John Brown
15. Only A Hobo
16. When The Ship Comes In
17. The Times They Are A-Changin’
18. Paths Of Victory
19. Guess I’m Doing Fine
20. Baby Let Me Follow You Down
21. Mama, You Been On My Mind
22. Mr. Tambourine Man
23. I’ll Keep It With Mine

The Original Mono Recordings features Dylan’s first eight long-playing albums, reproduced from their first generation monaural mixes as Dylan intended them to be heard: One channel of powerful sound, both direct and immediate. While stereo recordings had been available as early as the mid-1950s, mono was still the predominant – and often preferred – mode of recording and mixing by the top artists of the 1960s. As a result, artists like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan devoted their attention to the mono mixes, leaving the stereo mixing process to studio engineers.

The eight albums in The Complete Mono Recordings are as follows:

Bob Dylan (1962)
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)
The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964)
Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964)
Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Blonde on Blonde (1966)
John Wesley Harding (1967)